Ch.44 Gift giving ceremony

That night, Hisui once again joined Jax as they both went to sleep. In Jax's case, he didn't mind since he was used to it now, while Hisui wanted to spend more time with Jax.

The following day, servants woke Hisui early since she had to go and get dressed. She had to put makeup on, dress up and do her hair. Anyway, while she went to prepare, Jax went to train. He was now used to his daily training routine, and he felt better once he did it in the morning.

At eight, the servants once again went to the room and invited Jax to go to the dining hall where the king, princess and he would have breakfast. They had time to waste since people would start arriving by three in the afternoon.

At this point, Hisui had already prepared. She wore a green and purple dress and a tiara with seven gemstones. The largest was in the middle of her forehead, green, while the six other stones were purple. The servants had also applied light makeup on her, which attracted attention to her eyes.

After breakfast, the king went back to his study to continue working while the servants prepared the ballroom, and the princess took refreshing classes on how to act during the afternoon event. Finally, at three, the first carriage started to arrive at the gate of the castle. The three of them made their way to the ballroom while the servants went to welcome the guests. The king was seated on the room's main seat while the other two were at a corner of the room and talked while Jax showed her some of his magic.

Soon enough, people started entering the hall. They first greeted the king before greeting the princess and presenting their young children to the young princess. They all hoped that one of them might catch her attention or at least become friends.

However, they were bound to be disappointed as she was currently talking with Jax about magic, a subject she was very interested in. As time went on, more and more people arrived, and the hall started to get noisier.

Nobles, business people, royals and all kinds of important people started to arrive in the hall. Most of them brought a few people with them, mainly their wife and their children. However, while the adults were happy with meeting other important people as it might help them in their projects, the children weren't thrilled since they couldn't easily approach the princess. Children from six years old until the early twenty tried to approach the princess with various intentions. However, it could be easily seen by everyone that their purpose was to get preferential treatment for whatever they were planning or to go out with the princess.

After all, while she was still young, she was beautiful, had a significant if not perfect background and could be said to be the best girlfriend and wife they could imagine having. As such, as they saw her talking with Jax, they couldn't help being angry as they hated the fact that Jax was more successful than them. Of course, most of them had learnt one way or another that Jax wasn't anyone essential and was merely a friend of the princess, which in their opinion, gave them the chance to get closer to the princess and get rid of their 'competition.'

This way, the ball continued until seven in the afternoon. Many people tried to intervene in the conversation between Jax and Hisui, but as she wasn't interested in any of them, all of their attempts failed.

Finally, at seven, his previous employer, Miss Robin, came on stage and started playing music while people went to the hall's center to start dancing. Immediately, many people came closer to the princess to invite her to dance. At this time, however, the princess didn't have the choice but to accept a nobleman's kid invitation since she had to do the opening dance since it was her birthday. Moreover, Jax didn't have the status necessary to do the opening dance, so she had to accept someone else's invitation.

As this happened, Jax was amused at the reaction of the group of people between six and their early twenties as they were all sad to have missed the opportunity to dance with the princess as it might be a way for them to gain her favour.

All in all, the ball went well. After the opening dance, the princess went back to Jax despite the young noble who tried to start a conversation after the dance. Unluckily for him, she was only interested in Jax, who had begun eating various pastries served to the guests.

Next was the gift-giving ceremony. Everyone had a gift to give the princess, or it might seem inappropriate to attend the birthday party otherwise.

The first one to give a gift was the king, the princess's father, who gave her a new dress—followed by various nobles and the man from the magic council who mostly gave jewelry for her birthday. The other adults in the room gave a gift one after another. It was all the same kind of things such as invitations, paid vacation, etc. Hisui, who received the gifts, responded very politely with a smile on her face. However, for those who knew her personally, they knew that she couldn't care less for any of those items.

Finally, it was Jax's turn. Everyone at this time had known that Jax was a friend of the princess and a mage from the Fairy Tail guild since he was also a bit popular in the kingdom due to the various jobs he took and the job he took from a member of the nobility during his six-month bet with Laxus.

As he approached the princess with a smile, he reached out to his shadow and took out the gift box he had prepared for the princess in advance. The package wasn't anything special considering that everyone who came here was rich and had bought this kind of box. As he handed it to the princess, she took it with a glint in her eyes as she had been waiting impatiently to receive Jax's gift.

Opening the box, she took out a small bright green bracelet. The bracelet's colour was the same as Hisui's hair, and when one looked carefully, one could see various motifs embroidered on the bracelet, which showed legendary creatures. In addition to the ten colourful beads, the bracelet itself was beautiful. For those noble ladies who came with their husbands, they immediately noticed that the bracelet was made of shadow Arachne silk. With only this, they gave more attention to the bracelet as they could tell that such a small piece of silk would cost at least five or six million Jewels to get.

As Hisui showed a bright smile on her face, she immediately put on the bracelet. It showed the difference between Jax's gift and the others as she would simply have the servants take them to store after opening it. "Jax, you talked about a magic gift previously. Is this it?" Asked the king as he wanted to increase Jax's prestige through this gift. After all, for those nobles, the higher the price of the present, the better the gift.

"Yes, this is it. I asked someone to make the bracelet while I turned it into a magic item myself. Each bead contains my magic inside. The white bead contains air magic. Each bead can be used eight times before I need to recharge it, and the air magic allows the user to fly in the air for 30 minutes each time. The blue bead contains water magic and can create a water wall; the red bead is fire magic which can create a fireball. Then there is the earth wall of the earth magic, lightning discharge of the lightning magic, shockwave of the sound magic, healing of the fairy magic, binding of the nature magic, light orb of the light magic and shadow shift of the dark magic." He took a breath before continuing.

"The user can use them without spending any magic power, and except for the fire, lightning and sound magic which contains spells equivalent to an average A-rank spell, the rest of the magic spells are equivalent to a top A-rank magic. With this, she basically can save herself if she were to be attacked by a weak S-rank mage or at least flee without problems." Explained Jax to the king and the princess next to him. She loved the bracelet even more after learning that she could use it to fly in the air for half an hour each time or for a total of four hours.

Hearing this, the king opened his mouth without knowing what to say. It was the same for the various nobles, including those waiting for him to make a joke out of himself. After all, the gift he gave let the otherwise ordinary civilian use magic on par with strong A-rank mages and flee from weak S-rank mages. It was necessary to know that S-rank mages are the background of any guild and the reason they can stand tall in any kingdom. Some guilds don't even have those mages amongst their members. This bracelet can make a temporary top A-rank mage that can block a weak S-rank mage for a while.

'This is a life-saving magical artifact!' Thought the countless members present in the ballroom who listened to his explanation.

While most people in the room wanted to have a chat with Jax to buy a few bracelets or create a business out of it depending on the amount he could make, it was the gift-giving ceremony, and they had to stay calm.

In this way, the ceremony continued but with a weird atmosphere as all the gifts were trash compared to what Jax gave. Moreover, everyone only wanted to talk with Jax while the princess didn't care about any present after receiving the bracelet. It was understandable as this was an artifact that countless would want to own.

In the end, the ceremony finished rapidly as some servants went to take the gifts back while other servants brought food to the venue once again.

As for Jax, seeing that he would get stuck by all those people, he slipped from the room at the end of the ceremony and went to walk in the castle. He wasn't interested in doing business with those people at all currently. Anyway, if they really wanted to buy some, they would find him at the Fairy Tail guild.